The manufacture of integrated circuits (IC) is becoming ever more complicated as finer and finer geometries are designed into today's semiconductor ICs. For example, as manufacturing processes become more complex over time due to finer geometries, the leakage component of the chip power increases, which can become problematic for next level assembly and at system level. By way of example, leakage component of chip power was about 10-20% of total power at 130 nm and 25-50% of total power at 90 nm; whereas, in current 65 nm technology, this leakage component is upwards of 25-65% of total power.
Due to a high leakage component, semiconductor yield has been impacted by tighter iddq screens. Iddq testing is a method for testing CMOS ICs for the presence of manufacturing faults. Iddq testing uses the principle that in a correctly operating quiescent circuit, there is no static current path between the power supply and ground, except for a small amount of leakage. However, when leakage is above a certain threshold, e.g., 1× or less of estimate obtained by running a power estimating tool, these circuits have to be scrapped thus reducing overall chip yield.
The current method of selective voltage binning is a manual process which is prone to error. By way of example, leakage cutpoints (for different binning) are manually determined. Also, the design centers will apply additional timing runs at identified cutpoints which are manually used to set leakage limits. The cutpoints are used to identify the ring oscillator (speed bin) marker which is burned in fuses in the semiconductor die. However, in these current methods, the manual set is required for each semiconductor product. Also, there is potential for error in card/second level assembly. Additionally, there may be no flag if the bin information is applied incorrectly and does not match product design assumptions. Lastly, amongst other possible shortcomings, there is no opportunity to update the criteria at a later stage in processing.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described hereinabove.